FS9 -- I'm about to give up

[SteveLewis 0]

John, Thanks. Yes, I did the system.ini edits you suggested. Might have helped but I still had the stutters. I tried the start of my flight at KCLE in the windowed mode and still had the stutters. Thanks for the help on how to install the 30.82 drivers. Although, when you say if they install.... What if they don't? :-eek I have Roxio's Go Back so I think I can revert to an earlier time so I'll try your suggestion. If you don't see me back at the Forum, you'll know I killed off my PC. *:-* Just kidding.Steve

[SteveLewis 0]

Thanks, Chris. I've downloaded them and am about to install. I can't wait until you work your cloud magic on FS2004's weather engine. Wow. That'll be something to behold.Steve

[Guest SoarPics]

Hi Steve,Well, this is no fun. It really is a great sim. As others have said, don't give up.Some things I'd recommend:1) Your stutters may have something to do with the computer accessing the hard drive more than it needs to. Try setting the swap file to a fixed size. With the amount of memory you have, a swap file fixed at 768 MB's might be worth a try.2) In your BIOS should be a setting that's called something like "Graphics Aperature Size". Check it... the best starting point for a video card like yours (w/ 128 MB's) is probably 128. But there are no hard and fast rules here. Try various settings (32, 64, 128, 256) and see if any of the settings makes a difference.3) As another test, in the DXDIAG Display section you can DISABLE "AGP Texture Acceleration". This makes a difference for some folks.4) You don't say what motherboard is in your computer, but I would visit the MB's manufacturer's site and download the most recent chipset drivers.Press on,

[SteveLewis 0]

Well, I attempted to follow your directions to the letter. I uninstalled my NVIDIA drivers from the Control Panel. I had downloaded the Detonator Destroyer file and got the following: Unknown Card or non-NVidia Drivers I rebooted and attempted to install the 30.82 drivers and got(again): Setup was unable to locate a detected device's PCI ID in NVAML.inf Now I was screwed. I rebooted and my PC asked Please insert the disk labeled NVIDIA Compatable Display Driver Disk 1 I did so and ended up with the 30.00 stock drivers. What a mess. Luckily, I had Go Back and rebooted and used it. The PC only went to Safe mode twice and locked up three times but I'm finally back where I was two hours ago. I do not understand why I am currently using the 43.45 drivers but can't change them to anything else... :-hmmm Steve

[John_Cillis 2,406]

It's sure strange that your card is coming up as unknown trying to load the drivers.... What i can say for certain is it sounds like this is certainly related to the 1fps issue... Have you tried the dxdiag /ghost command? Anything odd there? If you can't change drivers, I'd lay odds that the problem isn't with FS2004, but something gone wrong a fair ways in the past on your system. And those are sometimes impossible to fix... Only other thing might be your card reporting the wrong device id....-John

[Hornit 3]

Steve, Im having the same problems, had them with the press copy and have them with this version also. I did some major testing tonight with my system. First my box: P4 at 2.94ghz(slightly OC 2.8) 512mb DDR PC2100 Gigabyte mobo intel chipset (845E) Gainward GF4 Ti4200 128mb ram (Golden sample) WIN 98SE 30.82 Detonators I have my settings on something a bit above medium. Terrain mesh slider is at 70%. I have autogen and scenery complexity at normalno land or water detail textures or reflections. Dynamic scenery is off. I have the weather set for testing at 20 miles vis and light cirrus, custom set. I am using the default Baron. I have some tweaks as per others results in my config, namely the Terain extended radius and one or two others for better textures farther out. I also have Chris Willis latest clouds, but its not a factor for these tests. What I am trying to duplicate is the stutter and how to stop it. My frame rate is set at 28 right now. I have 2XFSAA set in Rivatuner along with -4 LOD. I run the sim at 1024 res and also 1152. For these tests I used 1024. Frame rates can easily stay at 28 for a good while. However, it doesn't stay this way. After flying for just a few minutes I start the stutter. I could not figure out what triggers it. My stutters are only for a second or so and the frame rate will go from 28 down to 14 one time, 19 another and I occasionally see single digits too. It makes flying quite annoying and this should not be happening on my system. 2002 runs fluidly at about 25-30 frames with a lot of detail and FS Skyworld clouds plus scenery and AI. So I tried things one at a time, to make a long story short, I think I have found the culprit and want you to give this a shot. Set your Terrain texture slider full left and see what happens. Guess What? No stutter here, I do get an occasional very slight slip in frame rates, but that is usually due to autogen I believe. I tried this with NO autogen, and mesh to 0 and scenery complexity to 0. As long as I had the terrain textures set above 0, I would get stutter. Try this and let me know how it goes. Personally Im dissapointed. My system should run this sim a good bit better I believe, I dont mind low frame rates, but the burp every 5-8 seconds is almost unflyable and very annoying. Something is going on differently with the way textures are loaded or with thier structure. I looked but dont see anything yet with the types of bitmaps and how they are set up. I havent done a lot of work in this area yet and may not pursue it further at this point. While the flying and fluidity is there, I guess this is going to be an IFR sim for me now, as the ground just looks like crap with this slider set like this. I hope someone else can come up with a fix for this but Im not holding a lot of hope right now. I am trying different settings for AGP etc and will get back If I find anything earth shattering, but I wouldn't hold your breath. So far I have tried 128mb, 64, and 32 for AGP aperture in my BIOS and nothing seems to help. I will try disabling agp in dxdiag also. Good luck and please let us know if this helps at all. There sure seem to be a good bit of problems with this sim as it stands. This is a big issue for me, the bridge issue is larger than I thought too. most bridges are just screwed up, I think more than half of the ones I have seen are dorked. 3D clouds cause WAY too much of a fps hit with anything other than scatterd conditions. Trim seems a bit messed up for all aircraft too, seems there is a very sensitive area in the mid range, and outside this range there is little or no effect, then wham, your overtrimmed one way or another. 2002's trim was smooth and normal for me. Again, Im dissapointed with this,I expected my rig to run this a WHOLE lot better. My review over at SIMHQ was probably not the most accurate I guess. I gave too much credence to the fact that improvements would be seen with the gold release. I think I was wrong in doing that.Hornit

[SteveLewis 0]

John, Haven't tried the dxdiag/ghost thing yet. I have one question on that, however. When you say: ~If they install, then go to Start/Run, then type: dxdiag /ghost ~In the More Help tab, click Inactive. ~Backup any inactive devices you see.... where/how do I back them up? Is it easy/obvious or do I have to know something? I only ask that because I still can't make sense of the Riva Tuner. I don't understand why my PC is having trouble identifying my card as a NVIDIA. When I upgraded to the 43.45 drivers the install went perfectly (at least I thought it did). According to the Control Panel/Display I have the 4345 drivers installed. :-hmmm Thanks for your help.Steve

[SteveLewis 0]

Hornit, I'll give it (Texture slider far left) a try. Might be Tuesday night, however. If this is the culprit I'll stay with FS2002. I loaded up Ruud's textures in FS9 thinking that the textures would look as good as, if not better, than they do in FS2002. Guess what? They actually look better in FS2002. There are only two improvements that I see in FS9 over FS2002: One is the ATC using multiple runways and the other is the clouds/weather. Other than that, everything else went backwards IMHO.I'm glad that I still have FS2002 and all the add-ons I've accumulated over the past two years. MS had better patch/fix this release. I can't believe that the Beta Testers didn't have some thoughts on these issues. I've beta tested for some freeware developers and every little quirk I saw I reported.

[Geofa 108]

Steve-Beta testers have lots of thoughts about a lot of things.Get your problems worked out and give it more time.There is lots more improved than what you mention, and many of us-yes even the beta testers, don't have the performance problems you mention.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[SteveLewis 0]

Geof A: I didn't mean to bash the beta testers. My PC is only 6 months old and was bought with FS9 in mind. I still use Win98Se and didn't opt for the upgrade to XP so my memory is limited to 512 Mb. With everything I've read on this (and other) forums I just wish that someone would explain why some people (like you and others) have no problems what so ever with FS9 and others have tons of problems. I have a MSI GeF4200Ti 128 Mb RAM video card and, frankly, my system runs fantastic on FS2002. Is FS9 that much different from FS2002 that you have to re-configure your entire PC? That doesn't make sense to me. I'm no PC wiz. I originally thought that if I just upgraded to Win XP Home and added 512 Mb more ram that maybe my problems would disappear. Seems that others have my same problem with XP so that probably wouldn't solve anything. My issue with the driver for my video card I will eventually work out. Maybe the 30.82 drivers will do it for me. Maybe it's a P4 heat problem. My multi-speed fan runs pretty fast when I'm in FS9. As to all the other improvements: I just can't see them yet for all the stutters, hesitation, etc. If I have to turn down all my sliders to make it run, why is it then still better than FS2002? That only leaves the weather and ATC -- and I use Radar Contact, anyway.

[Geofa 108]

I share your frustration as I have been there before with other stuff.One question-are you running fs9 stock or did you add other items such as what is needed for Radar Contact? If you have added anything-I would remove and then try.You may want to simply try removing, defragging and reinstalling if you haven't already. Also, perform your testing with fs default aircraft-many that use older gauges can run definately less smoothly.Keep with it though-like others who have had problems and stuck with it-I think the end results are well worth it. :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[SteveLewis 0]

I'm running FS9 stock. Radar Contact is a stand alone program and I must run my flight plans out of FS2002 using FSNav4.5. RC will run along side FS9 after I reboot my machine to avoid conflicts.I've tried the default Lear and have the same problems at Seattle. I've downloaded Chris Willis' new cloud set and will try them in the next day or so. The non-stock FS9 items I've been trying are Shez's KCLE gMax scenery (bad fps on final for some reason - otherwise in the 10-12 range on the ground) and Bill Grabowski's ERJ panel (Bill's upgrading for FS9 -- I'm running the FS2002 set up) but no apparent fps hit with the panel.I'm seriously considering upgrading my operating system to XP Home and adding another 512 Mb of SDRAM. It's my understanding that Win98 will only support 512 Mb of RAM but I had 640 Mb installed in my old AMD900 PC and never had a memory management problem.I'll keep pluggin' away at it and it will run for me. I remember having similar issues with FS2000 when I upgraded from FS98 and with FS2002 upgrading from FS2000. So, it's nothing new. I'm just getting impatient in my old age.. :-lol

[Guest GabrielR]

Getting XP and more RAM sounds like a good Idea.Have your problems solved before you add anything to the default, that way is easier to ID the culprit.

[Guest GabrielR]

Getting XP and more RAM sounds like a good Idea.Have your problems solved before you add anything to the default, that way is easier to ID the culprit.

[Hornit 3]

Just for the record, I have tested and been involved in several large flight sim development projects that have ended up as full blown retail releases. My system while not cutting egde, is fast and clean.I run NOTHING in the background. My HD is regularly defragged and is usually running at optimum performance. So far all I have installed are some third party aircraft, no other programs or textures other than Chris Willis's cloud fix. I honestly believe there is a problem. I do NOT beleive it is an operating system problem either. I have tried three sets of detonator drivers and all diplay exactly the same thing. I would bet that if others do some real searching, they will see similar problems. Its very subtle on my machine and I did not notice it right away. I think Steve suffers from it a bit more than I at this point. I am getting to the point where I am exhausting all the options and dont know what else to try. Upgrading to XP may be the answer, but I doubt it. I will also continue tweaking but as time goes on I'm losing hope :(Hornit